Mainstream Media, in the tank for Obama, are trying the following three strategies designed to discourage McCain supporters, and to depress Republican voter turnout:

(1) Calls for McCain to just give up and quit, because the race is over.(2) Wild claims of Obama winning states that shock and surprise you.(3) Repeated insistance that blacks and young people will decide this election, and they are all going to vote in record numbers for Obama.

Fellow Republicans: when Republicans vote, Republicans win. That’s all that is needed. Show up and vote on November 5, 2008. Just do it.

So anyway, it´s Halloween Night and the only ghouls I´m worrying about are either standing for election or else they HAVE been elected. Hope you are all well – I´m down here in sunny Tenerife but I watch all that goes on —- so keep behaving and leave the misbehavin´ to me!

Now then, pay attention all. I’ve been wanting to share this song with you all for years and finally found it. It’s a Kirsty MacColl song which is just laden with pathos given what happened to her – listen to the words. In Soho Square, just off Oxford Street in London, there now sits a bench dedicated to her memory and if I do nothing else of value in this world, at least I made a small financial contribution to ensure it is there. I often go to Soho Square and this song goes always through my mind — counting those stars in the sky…..Do listen to this, it’s a killer tear-jerker. The last few seconds of the song explain all…

This is dedicated to ATW´s Alison who knows Soho Square well..(Now THERE is a song title for you)

Barack Obama’s senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week’s election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harbouring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.

Well it wouldn’t be a bad idea, if a bit late. A fella likes to know his bride doesn’t harbour any nasty surprises before he carries her across the threshold. Liberally sprinkling your patter with ‘hope’ and ‘change’ for two years, deliberately raising expectations only to rein it back when you’re through the door and halfway up the stairs is a bit cheeky. ‘Chutzpah’ springs to mind.

Still, we’ll put Peggy “I won’t have to pay for my gas or mortgage” Joseph down for the Libertarian Party campaign of 2012 right now, shall we?

According to the OECD, The United States already has a ‘progressive’ tax system. In fact it’s the most progressive tax system amongst industrialised nations, collecting the largest share of taxes from the richest 10% of the population.

Remember that hit by The Buggles from many years ago “Video killed the Radio Star”?

Well, media has moved on a lot from just video and with the advent of MP3 and internet downloads, even the vaunted video star has fallen from grace. We live in a virtual techno-world which is media rich – just google it and a world of information appears at your fingerprints on virtually any subject under the sun. Swich on the TV and be dazzled by a massive diversity of channels competing for your entertainment. Switch on your internet radio and tune in to stations from around the world. Get news reports sent to your mobile phone. The question is; with all this surfeit of information are we more or less informed than but a few generations ago? Are we, this generation which has more knowledge instantly accessible to us, more informed and more discriminatory than those who went before? Or are we just little ignorant savages that can bring up information but cannot discern the value of it?

Let me explain what I mean.

My grandmother left school when she was around 12 years old. That’s how it was back for young girls in the early 1900’s. Of all the many people I have met in my life, I feel she knew more than any of them. But she had little formal education. There were few books for her to read and her main source of information was the radio. She loved to tune in to her big old transistor radio with the glowing orange valves. I can still see it – a grainy image imprinted on my memory. She also liked to read her Bible. And she enjoyed conversing with her many friends. Her wisdom came from how she dealt with life, how she coped with adversity (Her husband – David Vance – died when she was 54 years old) and how she appreciated the important things and disregarded the passing trivialities. When she died, in 1996, it was the biggest loss I had ever encountered in my life – and only my father’s passing last year caused me that same intense sense of anguish. She knew how to manage money – not that she had very much. Her attitude was to pay her way, not to be a borrower. She gave to charity, gave to family – and all from the tuppence of a widow’s pension. She knew how to run her domestic budget, how to maintain her property – and how to ensure that all financial possibilities were covered. That was prudence, that was careful management.

But how many people today show financial propriety? Who holds back on treating themselves to things they cannot comfortably afford? Who puts cash aside for a rainy day? And yet, don’t we have internet banking, all done at the press of a button? Don’t we have sophisticated financial advisers there to guide us as to how to get the best return on our cash? In fact, don’t we earn so much more than the generations that have been before us? Are we happier, more solvent?

News came in limited format for many decades in the past century. A daily paper, perhaps. News headlines every hour on the radio – and then as we moved through the 6o’s and into the 70’s – a bit more frequently. Now we have a 24/7 news cycle – a tree falls in a forest and we get live in-depth analysis with instant replays. How does it make you feel? More satisfaction that you are in touch with what is happening everywhere at anytime or more angst that you know about events over which you have absolutely no control?

We also live in an era of multi-channel TV. I can remember back when there were just two channels, then three…and finally four. I recall how TV finished at around 11.30pm with the playing of the National Anthem. Is it an improvment to have dozens, if not hundreds of TV channels to passively watch? Is the quality of programmes now so much superior?

The internet, of course, is the most recent media advance and it is one that brings us mixed blessings. If it did not exist, you and I could not communicate. The upside to it is that you have to actively seek me out here on ATW, it is a conscious decision you make and if you comment, then that is a further decision you are making – so much more similar to a conversation. I have to make the effort to provide content that you think is interesting and worthy of your time. That’s the good bit. The stranger bit is that whilst you know who I really am, I may not know you at all and yet you can engage with me on debate of some serious matters. This is a new development and not one that happened in the past. I find it curious – not good, not bad, just curious. Because of the longevity of ATW, I have gotten to know quite a few of you who read this in real life and have even met some of you. So I think that this new form of media communication is more stimulating and rewarding than other forms of passive media intereactions and can lead to friendships. Of course it also brings problems, with cyberstalkers, cranks and plain lunatics. What I find remarkable is the easy familiarity that many here use when discussing issues with each other. Few, if any of you, know the other and yet conversations run hot and heavy. Would you talk to real life friends the way you talk to the ATW commentariat? Does the anonymity of the net create the space that makes you comment so directly?

The diversity of the modern media means that it is not a shared experience for most of us. We all live in our own favourite channels, I suppose.

I’ll be blunt – I think that TV is a real and present danger to the human mind. It dumbs down, it creates passivity – it is harmful. Radio is a little better since the power of imagination prevails. The Net is great since it requires participation but offers wide variety. However is this all a diversion from real life? Do we seek to be remembered for the weighty comments we leave on blogs? Or could we be all be doing better things than this? Do you ever think thoughts like this?

I believe that it is sheer folly to think this generation is more informed that those which have gone before. We lack religious faith, we lack certainty. The middle ages gave us Shakespeare, this decade gives us X-Factor and American Pop Idol. People may access media more readily than at any other time in human history but I honestly do not believe for one second this is necessarily to our advantage.

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.”Aldous Huxley

I cancelled my subscription to The LA Times years ago. I cancelled because The LA Times takes that newspaper adage – “if it bleeds, it reads” — to an extreme; The LA Times features stories of death and mayhem.

The modern trend in journalism is to wrap social commentary around personal anecdotes. And at The LA Times, actual reporting – fact without an agenda – was long ago abandoned in favor of violent, heart-wrenching anecdotes designed to advocate for specific political solutions. Individual, personal heartbreaks – one man’s in-depth tale of booze and wife-beating, or a young woman’s story of prostitution on Sunset Blvd. – became vehicles for illustrating a social injustice, and to promote a cause.

I am not really surprised to read that The LA Times is now suppressing a video tape which reveals Obama’s close ties with PLO spokesperson, Khalidi.

Bias is expressed not only by how something is reported, but in the choice of what to report and what not to report. The LA Times is supporting Barack Obama, and will not release important information if it means that the story might hurt Obama at the polls.

Michael Steele, a rising star in the party and one of its most prominent African Americans, admitted it “will get hammered” next week in Congressional races.

Mr Steele may be correct on the immediate prospects of the Republican Party, but he’s dead wrong on how they can bring about their resurrection.

“We could very well be looking at a situation where we don’t get it back by 2016 or even 2020,” said Mr Steele. “So we could be looking at 12 years out like the Tories.”

“They went through a long dark winter of reassessment and realignment, but now David Cameron has got himself in a position where he looks like he is going to be the next prime minister.”

Point of order here old son, David Cameron has done nothing of the sort. David Cameron looks like he is going to be the next Prime Minister because the lies, mendacity, corruption and incompetence of the Labour government has caught up with them.

He praised the Tory leader, whom he met 18 months ago, for combining toughness and a “delicate touch” and having the wisdom to listen to “the people of England and understand what is required” at a particular moment in the party’s history.

“I have marvelled how the Tory leadership has been able to do that,” he continued. “That is the model for the Republican Party to regenerate ourselves and move forward.”

No, no, no. Let’s be clear. Not only have we lived through the most damaging government in British history, we’ve also witnessed possibly the saddest, most inneffective opposition to any regime. Now, there was nothing the Tories could do in May 1997 to prevent a Labour victory. They had been in government for 18 years, they were long-lived and the rotten Major government had made their re-election unthinkable. It was clear then then they were out of office for at least two terms.

However, they still ought to have opposed vigorously, however hopeless that would have seemed at the time. Instead, the Tories embarked on a programme of self-flagellation, apologising for their existence, accusing themselves of being the nasty party and jettisoning any last shred of conservatism with the putsch against Ian Duncan-Smith.

In the meantime the Blair Terror went on unopposed in both Parliament and the media. The Tory response was to ape New Labour; elect a young, principle-free leader and drop any pretence of seriousness. For Dave’s New Tories the environment was in, the question of whether Britons or a foreign state make our laws was verboten. The Tories, always and forever the stupid party, actually believe that this recipe has made them popular, and it’s a thought which seems to have infected Michael Steele.

The Tories are not popular. They lead Labour in the polls only because the Labour government is at a natural end, as the Tories were in 1997.

But this is the important point, if the Tories had opposed New Labour with principle and ferocity – on New Labour’s gross tax and spend policies, on the unbelievable debt Gordon Brown was always putting on us, against the assault on our liberties, the destruction of our pensions, on the great EU deception and on the many other ways that Labour has governed abysmally – the Tories would now stand a solid and unbreachable 25 points clear of Labour instead of a mere 10 (and wavering).

If the Democrats take the White House next week, and if President Obama avoids tipping over the apple cart, the Republicans may very well be in the wild for as long as Michael Steele predicts and there won’t be a thing the Republicans can do about it.

In the end time did for the Labour Party. We’re sick of them as we were sick of the Tories in 1997. Instead of tearing their hair out for the next 8 years the Republicans would be well advised instead to retreat to core principles – small government, low taxes and individual liberty (anyone remember those?) – and wait it out, let time and familiarity do for the Democrats whilst opposing decently and strongly. However well Obama does, one day the American people will be sick of him and the Democrats. If the people look for the credible alternative and see instead a bunch of sad losers without principles, they’ll blow their next chance of victory.

David Vance Live 21.1.19. Topics. Plan B for banjaxed? Irish terrorism to stop Brexit? Native American and fake new… pscp.tv/w/bxYgbzI0OTEx…

THE PRICE OF REWARDING TERRORISM

You do not defeat terrorism by rewarding terrorists, regardless of how many bleeding heart liberals argue otherwise. Want to know where that flawed approach leads to? Read UNIONISM DECAYED 1997-2007 - It's my first book and it explains what happens when you seeek to appease terrorists and call it peace. It's available right now for ATW readers so make sure you get your copy by emailing the editor! This is the book that dissents from the herd mentality that doing wrong can lead to being right. It doesn't and this book spells out WHY.

Copyright & copy; 2010 A Tangled Web (All rights reserved).Comments on articles here are unmoderated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of A Tangled Web or David Vance. Comments that are off-topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise unacceptable may be deleted by the Editor. However the fact a particular comment remains on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by David Vance of the views expressed therein.